THE 2010 BUDGET CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL MEETING AT THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE (MOF):
…WASTING TIME AND TALKING ROT…WITH THE COUNTRY NOT GOING ANYWHERE WITH EXPERT SIDELINED AND THEIR VIEWS DISCARDED.
By Mansor Puteh
SO YOU THINK BEING INVITED TO ATTEND THE 2010 BUDGET CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL MEETING AT THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE (MOF) WITH THE PRIME MINISTER OFFICIATING AND OTHER SENIOR OFFICIALS OF THE MINISTRY AND MORE THAN 300 SPECIAL GUESTS WAS INTERESTING.
YOU WILL BE SURPRISED AT HOW SHALLOW THE DISCOURSE IT WAS UNTIL YOU WERE INVITED TO ATTEND IT AS WHAT I HAD FOUND OUT WHEN I ATTEND THE ONE HELD AT MOF LAST 6 JULY.
THERE WERE SOME PEOPLE WHO WERE INVITED TO PRESENT PAPERS. THEY WERE ASKED TO PRESENT VIEWS ON HOW TO EXPAND THE ECONOMY AND HEIGHTEN IT.
But they ended up giving a public relations speech on behalf of their agencies and also companies which the prime minister found it necessary to chide some of them.
The prime minister gave a long speech, meant mostly for the press. It was nothing for those who were invited to swallow, as most of the things he said were what he had been saying before.
He should have given any speech other than to thank those who were there at their own time, with some others spending their official office time.
I sat at the back feeling lost.
So when the prime minister’s speech ended he opened those who were in the hall to offer views.
One by one they took the microphone. But none of them said anything that is close to the main topic.
If the prime minister and the panelists could stray from it, they thought they also could do the same.
In the end no one from the floor or in the panel said anything substantial.
I was expected to say something on how the government could do to expand the film and entertainment industry.
But I chose to remain quiet.
Freddie Fernandez of Karyawan took the microphone at the end of the session and said something which I thought was only good at the ministerial level. It was certainly not appropriate to raise petty issues in such a function.
But then he would have sensed that the function had strayed too far, so he thought he could also join in the bandwagon.
I did not speak because the time allocation was a mere three minutes.
How could anyone in the right mind offer views on something important to him without being the chance to elaborate?
So I decided to write beforehand a 71-page report which I did not get to present to the prime minister or anyone from the MOF.
I did not want to draw attention on it at the function, so I sent copies of it to the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, and minister of finance II and the secretary-general of MOF.
None of them bothered to acknowledge receipt of the report, which I had taken a lot of time and energy to write.
When I called MOF and the others, I found that the report was forwarded to a low-ranking officer, who then forwarded it to his junior.
None of them could find the time to study what the report contains.
And I am sure they are also not qualified to study it because they are not trained in film to know what I am writing. But they are too smug to admit it.
Being officers in the MOF and other agencies, they can pretend to be important and intelligent by forwarding the report to someone lower than them.
Thus, ended the 71-page report into the waste-paper basket.
Thus also ended what slogans the government has been using which could heighten the spirit of some but which can cause many others to feel like he wants to puke.
What they say is often not what they desire to do.
So slogans are only good at exposing their limitations. They are only good to use to hoodwink the Malaysian public into thinking that the slogans are jumping points for them to lurch forward.
But alas, they just end there, as mere slogans – empty ones at that.
Yet, there are still very many Malaysians who fall for the crab, repeating slogans on top of their voices and thinking that the louder the collective roar, things can happen like they are appealing to the higher being for help but without doing anything to make it happen.
So what good do you think those budget consultative meeting are. The answer is that it serves no one any good.
I doubt it if there was anything interesting that the officers of MOF could get from the meeting at the ministry on 6 July which I attended.
Lim Kok Wing, the president of his university with his own name, said something stupid by my standards.
He said the private sector and the government must sit together to look at the same picture so we know what we are seeing, instead of the two parties sitting in front of each other so we do not know what each party is seeing.
How on earth can such literary jib do to the well-being of the country and its citizens?
The meeting was supposed to be for qualified people in the different sectors to offer views; it is definitely not for someone to say something like that.
The worst comments, however, were given by an old man who claimed to represent two million old men like him, in an association.
He dared to provoke the government by saying that their two million members could turn things around and determine the outcome of the next general elections, if the government does not accede to their demands.
And just what did he want for his two million members?
He asked for the government to offer each of the old man and woman in the country a ‘social pension’ amounting to RM400 per month.
He claimed that there are many old men and women who lead a life as strays, in their old age, as what an English tabloid had just highlighted a few days earlier.
He did not say why those old men and women were doing that and what caused them to want to do that.
RM400 a month for more than two million of the members of his association amounts to RM800 million ringgit a month. For one year, he expects the government to come up with RM9.6 billion ringgit.
The amount will be larger if it takes into account other old men and women who are not members of his association.
I thought the proposal or threat was so stupid.
This is not the platform for him to voice his views on such matters.
It is one for him to offer his views and propose to the government what his association can do to help develop the economy of the country.
Yet, he did not do this, and on the contrary, used the occasion to demand from the government.
The two million members of his association are old people. And when will they want to say, its time for them to give back to the society and country?
This thought had never occurred to them, so they will die by asking for things from the government and the society.
It is a pathetic display of misplaced priorities.
Yet, this old man got a loud applause from the crowd of people who are CEOs and senior officers from many other government, semi-government agencies, NGOs and individuals like me. But I chose not to applaud at such a crass display of priorities.
But mostly those who took the microphones used the occasion to show their faces to the prime minister so they could be recognized by him and the other senior government officers.
They were not there to offer views, but to demand from the government.
So now you know what the budget consultative council meetings and other NKRA laboratories conducted by Idris Jala are.
They are just for show. They can never achieve what they desire to do. And all the views and proposals are only those from the ministries and nothing from the guests and other experts.
By Mansor Puteh
SO YOU THINK BEING INVITED TO ATTEND THE 2010 BUDGET CONSULTATIVE COUNCIL MEETING AT THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE (MOF) WITH THE PRIME MINISTER OFFICIATING AND OTHER SENIOR OFFICIALS OF THE MINISTRY AND MORE THAN 300 SPECIAL GUESTS WAS INTERESTING.
YOU WILL BE SURPRISED AT HOW SHALLOW THE DISCOURSE IT WAS UNTIL YOU WERE INVITED TO ATTEND IT AS WHAT I HAD FOUND OUT WHEN I ATTEND THE ONE HELD AT MOF LAST 6 JULY.
THERE WERE SOME PEOPLE WHO WERE INVITED TO PRESENT PAPERS. THEY WERE ASKED TO PRESENT VIEWS ON HOW TO EXPAND THE ECONOMY AND HEIGHTEN IT.
But they ended up giving a public relations speech on behalf of their agencies and also companies which the prime minister found it necessary to chide some of them.
The prime minister gave a long speech, meant mostly for the press. It was nothing for those who were invited to swallow, as most of the things he said were what he had been saying before.
He should have given any speech other than to thank those who were there at their own time, with some others spending their official office time.
I sat at the back feeling lost.
So when the prime minister’s speech ended he opened those who were in the hall to offer views.
One by one they took the microphone. But none of them said anything that is close to the main topic.
If the prime minister and the panelists could stray from it, they thought they also could do the same.
In the end no one from the floor or in the panel said anything substantial.
I was expected to say something on how the government could do to expand the film and entertainment industry.
But I chose to remain quiet.
Freddie Fernandez of Karyawan took the microphone at the end of the session and said something which I thought was only good at the ministerial level. It was certainly not appropriate to raise petty issues in such a function.
But then he would have sensed that the function had strayed too far, so he thought he could also join in the bandwagon.
I did not speak because the time allocation was a mere three minutes.
How could anyone in the right mind offer views on something important to him without being the chance to elaborate?
So I decided to write beforehand a 71-page report which I did not get to present to the prime minister or anyone from the MOF.
I did not want to draw attention on it at the function, so I sent copies of it to the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, and minister of finance II and the secretary-general of MOF.
None of them bothered to acknowledge receipt of the report, which I had taken a lot of time and energy to write.
When I called MOF and the others, I found that the report was forwarded to a low-ranking officer, who then forwarded it to his junior.
None of them could find the time to study what the report contains.
And I am sure they are also not qualified to study it because they are not trained in film to know what I am writing. But they are too smug to admit it.
Being officers in the MOF and other agencies, they can pretend to be important and intelligent by forwarding the report to someone lower than them.
Thus, ended the 71-page report into the waste-paper basket.
Thus also ended what slogans the government has been using which could heighten the spirit of some but which can cause many others to feel like he wants to puke.
What they say is often not what they desire to do.
So slogans are only good at exposing their limitations. They are only good to use to hoodwink the Malaysian public into thinking that the slogans are jumping points for them to lurch forward.
But alas, they just end there, as mere slogans – empty ones at that.
Yet, there are still very many Malaysians who fall for the crab, repeating slogans on top of their voices and thinking that the louder the collective roar, things can happen like they are appealing to the higher being for help but without doing anything to make it happen.
So what good do you think those budget consultative meeting are. The answer is that it serves no one any good.
I doubt it if there was anything interesting that the officers of MOF could get from the meeting at the ministry on 6 July which I attended.
Lim Kok Wing, the president of his university with his own name, said something stupid by my standards.
He said the private sector and the government must sit together to look at the same picture so we know what we are seeing, instead of the two parties sitting in front of each other so we do not know what each party is seeing.
How on earth can such literary jib do to the well-being of the country and its citizens?
The meeting was supposed to be for qualified people in the different sectors to offer views; it is definitely not for someone to say something like that.
The worst comments, however, were given by an old man who claimed to represent two million old men like him, in an association.
He dared to provoke the government by saying that their two million members could turn things around and determine the outcome of the next general elections, if the government does not accede to their demands.
And just what did he want for his two million members?
He asked for the government to offer each of the old man and woman in the country a ‘social pension’ amounting to RM400 per month.
He claimed that there are many old men and women who lead a life as strays, in their old age, as what an English tabloid had just highlighted a few days earlier.
He did not say why those old men and women were doing that and what caused them to want to do that.
RM400 a month for more than two million of the members of his association amounts to RM800 million ringgit a month. For one year, he expects the government to come up with RM9.6 billion ringgit.
The amount will be larger if it takes into account other old men and women who are not members of his association.
I thought the proposal or threat was so stupid.
This is not the platform for him to voice his views on such matters.
It is one for him to offer his views and propose to the government what his association can do to help develop the economy of the country.
Yet, he did not do this, and on the contrary, used the occasion to demand from the government.
The two million members of his association are old people. And when will they want to say, its time for them to give back to the society and country?
This thought had never occurred to them, so they will die by asking for things from the government and the society.
It is a pathetic display of misplaced priorities.
Yet, this old man got a loud applause from the crowd of people who are CEOs and senior officers from many other government, semi-government agencies, NGOs and individuals like me. But I chose not to applaud at such a crass display of priorities.
But mostly those who took the microphones used the occasion to show their faces to the prime minister so they could be recognized by him and the other senior government officers.
They were not there to offer views, but to demand from the government.
So now you know what the budget consultative council meetings and other NKRA laboratories conducted by Idris Jala are.
They are just for show. They can never achieve what they desire to do. And all the views and proposals are only those from the ministries and nothing from the guests and other experts.
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